in the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it; and it shall produce boughs, and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar: and under it shall dwell all birds of every wing; in the shade of its branches shall they dwell.
⛓ Read Ezekiel 17 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion3
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
The messianic cedar planted on the mountain, under which 'birds of every sort will nest,' is the prophetic prototype of a small planting that becomes a sheltering tree for the nations. High Coherence: Luke's tiny seed-to-tree growth tracks Ezekiel's promise.
High confidenceThe mustard plant that puts out 'great branches, so that the birds of the sky can lodge under its shadow' (4:32) reworks Ezekiel's noble cedar planted on the mountain under which 'all birds of every wing' dwell in the shadow of its branches. The branches-shadow-birds-nesting cluster is verbally and thematically tight (high volume), and the imperial-tree-as-kingdom motif coheres with Mark's kingdom parable.
High confidenceThe planted sprig becomes a noble cedar 'and birds of every kind will nest in it, in the shade of its branches' — the closest verbal source for 'the birds of the air come and lodge in its branches'; a Kingdom-tree sheltering the nations.
High confidence